Friday:

Damn that alarm clock went off early. Managed to stumble down to the lobby with two coffee cups in my hands and met up with the rest of the gang. I was highly impressed that Terry Brooks agreed to join us, since he hadn't arrived at the hotel until 2330 that evening and had flown in from Seattle. You know he had to be jet-lagged. Well, Joy Ward rode with me as I attempted to follow Tee Morris and the rest of the crew (I was the overflow vehicle). We were doing real well until, (you knew there had to be an until), we approached the toll booth. You know, that toll booth I didn't know was coming up. The one that required exact change. Luckily, I had some change in my ash tray in my truck but by the time we fumbled around, got the money and dumped it into the basket, Tee was long gone. A couple of quick cell phone calls and a few side streets later, we managed to catch up with him, but that was a "wake-up" moment for me.

Luckily, the rest of the trip was uneventful. Tee bought us coffee and bagels before we got to the school, which was a cool thing to do. Then we met with the Monacan High School High school students in two panels (each about an hour and a half long). Very sharp bunch of kids who listened (reasonably) attentively, asked good questions and didn't throw stuff at us. I consider the trip a success. We got a nice e-mail from the teacher thanking us for coming out. If nothing else, the time at the HS made the whole con worth attending.

That afternoon, I had a panel on podcasting. We had a good crowd, especially for a 4:00 on Friday afternoon. We were discussing equipment and Tee mentioned there was a sale at Musician's Friend on a USB mixer board with a free microphone. I've been thinking about getting a small desktop to try podcasting, but this would be a good beginning system. Well, by the time the panel was over, one of the people in the audience had found the web site and the sale for me. Commandeering a table in the hall, I placed my order and with a little luck, I'll be up and on the air (so to speak) in the not-so-distant future. (I can hear wishweaver groaning in the background.)

Caught up with dzeytoun after this panel and grabbed some dinner at a local Captain D's. Then returned to the con to look around and sit in on a couple of other panels. Strangely enough, besides the panels I was on, I didn't attend many other panels this convention. Not quite certain why. Also caught up with mabfan and his wife. Didn't get to spend as much time visiting with him as I would have liked, but it's always nice to put a face and voice with a blog.

I went to one of the other panels that evening on Query Letters. I knew we were in trouble when three out of the four panelist were small press editors/publishers. When the first person spoke and told people not to put a hook and a summary of their story in the query letter, because all she wanted to know was who you were, the name of the story and your prior publishing credits, I knew we were in trouble. She basically said to ignore everything that agentobscura had put out at the SCBWI workshop. Hmm, listen to a small press horror poetry editor or an active YA agent. Then they went into the "poor man's copyright" (literary urban legend) and that before submitting anything you should register it with the Writers' Guild first, which is where I walked out. Poor Robert Jeschonek (a fellow Star Trek writer) was up there trying to put out good information based on his experiences, but he was being overrun, although he says it got a "little" better after I left. Needless to say, I had a long talk with the programming chair (Tony Ruggerio) who let me wind down before I said some stuff I'd regret later.

My next two panels were at 2200 and 2300 (10 and 11pm for you civilian types), and the experience couldn't have been more different. The first panel was Anime Primer, and for once, we had a number of Anime/Manga newbies in the audience. We had a great panel. There was a person there who worked Katsucon, one who works Otakon, and Steven Bennett, who used to be an animator in Japan (he started when he was 13, making him one of the youngest to ever animate there, an also was one of the first, (if not the first), American to work in the industry. He used to draw Urusei Yatsura among other works. Really active audience as well as very active panelists. Much fun was had by all.

The 2300 panel, Writing About Strong Women on the other hand, was not so much fun. I knew we were in trouble when the moderator, John Ringo, decided he wasn't just going to be a moderator but also a participant and proceeded to pontificate on how women should NOT be allowed in combat situations, which of course, got Joy Ward spun up and the rest of the panel was pretty much the two of them bickering. John Wright kept trying to get the panel back on track, but it was not a good scene. The less said about this panel the better.

Went to a couple of room parties afterward, talking about good and bad movies and then called it a night.

Saturday:

As luck would have it, I had no panels until noon, so I slept in, (0830) and then caught breakfast at the hotel's buffet with Valerie Griswold-Ford, (an editor/author with Dragon Moon Press), and Tee. Tee was the guest liaison for the con and he was starting to look a little frazzled by this time. Killed a little time before my panel and then went to Are Comic Books taking over the Big Screen?. Very fun panel. Two of the panelists were web-comic people and one guy used to work for Techno Comics and other various medium to small press comics. We had a great deal of fun talking about why comic movies might be popular, the fear of too many sequels (can you say Superman IV?) and how cyclical the movie industry is. However, the highlight of the panel had to be when James Chambers said, he'd like to see Bruce Campbell as Doctor Strange in a movie. Think about it.

My signing at 1500 was different since I was supposed to follow Terry (da man) Brooks. Let's just say, he'd already been signing an hour and the line still stretched off into the distance. So, I sat there at the table with him and kept him company while he dealt with people who brought up one paperback or a box of 30 books for him to sign and he was gracious to everyone as he could be. Man knows how to work a crowd.

My last panel for Saturday was (supposed to be) The Future of Star Trek and along with Bob Jeschonek, we had two other really good panelists. Plus, we were able to open the panel with the announcement of the new Star Trek movie. That got the crowd's interest right off the bat and I think this panel was the most highly attended panel I had the entire con. As usual, there were a few in the audience who thought they "knew" Star Trek better than the panelists, but Bob did a great job of keeping both the audience and the panelists under control.

My real last panel for Saturday was Murder in Mystery. I was a last minute replacement for this panel and we were having fun talking about the difference between tension, horror, and gore. Sometimes less is definitely more when it comes to not overwhelming the reader (or the viewer's senses). We not only got to talk about how we've killed off characters in our works, but also what were some of "the best" death scenes we'd read/seen. Unfortunately, I didn't get to tell the audience about "Death by Killer Slinky", but there's always next year.

I attended the To Agent or Not To Agent panel, which was moderated by Elizabeth Massie, whom I found out is a fellow BP Multimedia/iBooks survivor. All four of the panelists had (or had had) agents and talked about what having an agent does for you, how they get to be the bad guy, the joys and perils of agents, etc. A couple of them mentioned Writer Beware and Preditors and Editors (which I highly recommend also). Even though none of the panelists had gotten their agent through a query letter, they had done queries and had some good information (to counteract the panel the day before).

More room parties followed this panel.

Sunday:

Had to get up for the What to do While You Wait for a Response from a Submission panel that I moderated. As luck would have it, James Chambers, Elizabeth Blue and Mike Allen were all editors as well as writers, so I modified a few of my questions and had them talk to the audience from the editor's point of view also. ("What exactly does happen to your submission once they receive it?") We got some good questions from the audience not only about what we do while we're waiting (besides working on the next project), but they were very interested in the editing process. I wish we would have had an agent on this panel to talk about it from that POV, but maybe next year.

Went to my coffeehouse and had a good time talking to the other authors in the area. Sunday was the lightest day of the convention crowd wise. I'm not exactly sure how many people came to Ravencon, but apparently it did very well for a first year SF/F convention and the majority of the guest mentioned they'd love to come back next year. Huzzah to the entire Ravencon staff, but especially Mike Pedersen, Tee Morris and Tony Ruggerio! Well done, gentlemen, well done.

Checked out of the room, hit the dealer's room and picked up some more pirate stuff and visited with some people. Took off from Richmond about 1330 and headed north for home. All in all, a lot of fun, met some great people and made a few new friends. What more can you ask from a convention?